RRND Email Full Text (Scheduled)

  • EU, Australian regimes seal trade deal as Western countries hedge against US risks

    Source: CNBC

    “The European Union and Australia agreed to a sweeping trade deal on Tuesday, the latest move by U.S. allies to rethink their economic ties amid deepening global geopolitical uncertainty. The agreement, which resulted from almost eight years of talks, would remove most of the tariffs the two sides had imposed on each other’s goods and allow the EU greater access to critical mineral supplies from Australia. … The European Union has pushed to clinch new agreements with trade partners over the past year in an effort to diversify its economic relations, defense and military security partnerships that have come under threat as the U.S. appears to be increasingly unreliable.” (03/24/26)

    https://www.cnbc.com/2026/03/24/eu-australia-trade-deal-trump-tariffs-war-risks.html

  • Coalition sues to stop Trump’s Kennedy Center reconstruction project

    Source: United Press International

    “A coalition of leading cultural and architectural preservation organizations has asked the court to stop the Trump administration from carrying through with its quarter-billion-dollar Kennedy Center reconstruction project. The National Trust for Historic Preservation in the United States, along with seven other organizations, filed a lawsuit Monday in a Washington, D.C., federal court seeking injunctive relief prohibiting the Trump administration from starting any construction work at the iconic Potomac River center without completing the required public review and consultation process.” (03/24/26)

    https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2026/03/24/Trump-sued-Kennedy-Center/7701774337904/

  • Hong Kong: Beijing quisling regime grants police power to demand phone, computer passwords

    Source: Al Jazeera [Qatari state media]

    “Hong Kong police are now empowered to require anyone suspected of violating the semi-autonomous city’s national security [sic] law to hand over passwords to their mobile phones or computers. Officials will brief lawmakers on the new provisions on Tuesday, ‌a government statement said. The measure, which took effect on Monday, is part of the national security [sic] law imposed by Beijing in 2020 following large, sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests in this Chinese territory. … Refusing to comply could lead to up to one year’s imprisonment and a fine of up to 100,000 Hong Kong dollars ($12,768), while providing ⁠false or misleading information could bring up to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of up to 500,000 Hong Kong dollars ($63,840).” (03/24/26)

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/3/24/hong-kong-grants-police-power-to-demand-phone-and-computer-passwords

  • NJ: Judge appoints new US attorney after courts rejected Justice Department workarounds

    Source: CNN

    “The chief district judge in New Jersey appointed Robert Frazer, a career prosecutor, to serve as US attorney for the state, ending for now a dispute over the legality of the office’s leadership that threatened to derail criminal investigations. Frazer is a longtime prosecutor who has worked on violent crime and gang organized crime cases, and most recently served as senior trial counsel. … Federal Judge Matthew Brann ruled last summer that Habba was illegally appointed as the acting US attorney in the District of New Jersey. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision. Bondi later appointed a trio of attorneys to split Habba’s role: Philip Lamparello, Jordan Fox and Ari Fontecchio. Earlier this month, Brann found Bondi didn’t have the ability to create an alternative leadership structure in that way.” (03/23/26)

    https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/23/politics/judge-appoints-new-top-prosecutor-new-jersey-robert-frazer

  • FIFA hit with complaint to EU over World Cup ticket pricing

    Source: Politico

    “European consumer group Euroconsumers along with Football Supporters Europe have filed a complaint with the European Commission accusing FIFA of abusing its monopoly over World Cup ticket sales to impose excessive prices and unfair conditions on fans. The complaint, obtained by POLITICO, alleges breaches of Article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which prohibits abuses of a dominant market position. … The groups point to a range of alleged abusive practices, including limited transparency on ticket categories and seat allocation, a ‘variable pricing’ system that can push prices higher over time, and the actual scarcity of tickets advertised from $60.” (03/24/26)

    https://www.politico.eu/article/fifa-eu-complaint-world-cup-ticket-pricing

  • TN: Homeowner shoots intruder

    Source: Action News 5

    “Memphis police are investigating a shooting near the Westwood area that left one woman injured early Monday morning. … Upon arrival, officers found a woman lying in front of the residence with visible gunshot wounds on her upper leg. The homeowner told police he was sleeping when he heard noises from the back of his home, then saw an unknown woman inside. The homeowner stated that when the woman said she wanted to buy his residence, that’s when he shot her. The woman told police she was shot after she entered the residence through the unlocked back door. MPD states that the woman is experiencing mental health issues.” (03/23/26)

    https://www.actionnews5.com/2026/03/23/shooting-reported-near-westwood-area-mpd-says/


  • The Case for Letting FISA’s Section 702 Expire

    Source: The Dispatch
    by Patrick G Eddington

    “Section 702 authorizes the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect communications of non-U.S. persons located abroad without a warrant. However, because of the structure of the global telecommunications system, the text messages, phone calls, and other digital data of people in the United States are invariably captured during FISA Section 702 collection activities. That information is stored in databases that are queried by the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even some Central Intelligence Agency personnel — all without having to obtain a warrant from a federal judge before conducting such searches. The prior abuses of such Section 702 collection and warrantless database querying are well documented. This month, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a 116-page bill—the Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act — ostensibly designed to bring an end to nearly 20 years of constitutional rights violations under Section 702.” (03/24/26)

    https://thedispatch.com/article/fisa-section-702-surveillance-intelligence/

  • Iran war could cripple the ‘Yuxi Circle’ or 55% of world population Iran war could cripple the “Yuxi Circle” or 55% of world population

    Source: Responsible Statecraft
    by Karthik Sankaran & Sarang Shidore

    “The ‘Yuxi Circle,’ named for the Chinese city at its center, has a radius of roughly 2500 miles and contains about 55% of the world’s population within it – the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, the Koreas, and all the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. For the last four decades, this region has benefited from GDP growth of about 5% each year, driven by the expansion of industrialization, trade, agricultural productivity, and urbanization. This has led to extraordinary increases in human welfare and a shift in the economic geography of the world away from the North Atlantic basin. But these achievements could all be seriously jeopardized by ongoing events in the Persian Gulf.” (03/24/26)

    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/iran-war-asia/

  • Teachers Are Seeking Alternatives to Traditional Unions

    Source: The Daily Economy
    by Corey A DeAngelis

    “Anew Harvard-Harris poll shows that 60 percent of voters believe teachers unions should stay out of politics. A differently worded poll would likely reveal even stronger sentiment. Ask voters whether union dues pulled straight from teachers’ paychecks should fund political activity, and the numbers would likely climb higher. The public already senses what many teachers have lived: unions exist more for activism than for academics. The National Education Association’s annual financial report confirms the imbalance.” (03/24/26)

    https://thedailyeconomy.org/article/teachers-are-seeking-alternatives-to-traditional-unions/

  • Individualism in Rothbard’s Natural Rights Libertarianism

    Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
    by Wanjiru Njoya

    “Individualism certainly means different things to different people, a point which Friedrich von Hayek highlighted in distinguishing between true and false individualism. He observed that individualism ‘has been used to describe several attitudes toward society which have as little in common among themselves as they have with those traditionally regarded as their opposites.’ It is important to bear this in mind when considering whether a political view is compatible with individualism. Much depends on what is meant by individualism in the first place.” (03/24/26)

    https://mises.org/mises-wire/individualism-rothbards-natural-rights-libertarianism

  • How to End the War in Iran

    Source: The American Conservative
    by Justin Logan

    “The logic of the war at present offers a stark choice: either expand the mission to regime change — which will entail the use of large numbers of ground troops for an extended period of time — or else pocket the tactical gains achieved today and pursue an off-ramp. In light of the costs and with the war’s stated goals secure, Trump should work to end the conflict and reestablish the stable flow of oil and natural gas onto world markets, shoring up the U.S. and global economies. Caution is called for: However hard the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program were, talks to end the war are likely to be harder. Both sides will need to ignore things they want, stop doing things they want to keep doing, and restrain potential spoilers.” (03/24/26)

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/how-to-end-the-war-in-iran/

  • Implications of Coase for Law

    Source: David Friedman’s Substack
    by David Friedman

    “When I first published my interpretation of the implications of Coase’s article ‘The Problem of Social Cost,’ Coase was a colleague of mine at the University of Chicago Law School. His comment on the piece was that one never understands one’s ideas until someone else explains them to you. I suspected at the time that the comment was intended to be gently critical of my interpretation, only worked out more precisely why many years later, rereading the body of his work in the process of writing a review of his final book. Coase thought of the article primarily as a critique of modern economics. Since I was an economist with a position in a law school I read it for its implications for constructing legal systems. This is an account of his ideas from my point of view, not necessarily his.” (03/23/26)

    https://daviddfriedman.substack.com/p/implications-of-coase-for-law

  • War Abroad and Authoritarianism at Home

    Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
    by Ron Paul

    “War allows governments to increase spending, taxes, and regulations in order to feed the war machine. Wars can justify measures that remain in place long after the wars end. An example of this is income tax withholding that was created to fund World War Two. The use of war as a justification for increased interference in the market is reason enough for libertarians to oppose war. However, war also enables the government to violate liberty.” (03/23/26)

    http://www.ronpaullibertyreport.com/archives/war-abroad-and-authoritarianism-at-home

  • The Uncomfortable Truth About Immigrants

    Source: Independent Institute
    by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

    “We tend to focus on why immigrants want to come to the U.S., but we talk much less about why the U.S. wants immigrants to come to this country—i.e., why, xenophobic rhetoric notwithstanding, so many Americans have quietly and consistently welcomed them. The foremost reason for this is simply that Americans don’t want to have babies. For decades now, the fertility rate among native-born Americans has been below the replacement rate (2.1). … Not surprisingly, the native-born work force has diminished by several million since peaking in 2005 and now amounts to less than 140 million. If no foreign workers are added to the economy, in a few years, the labor force will shrink much more dramatically, reflecting the impact of the currently dismal fertility rate.” (03/23/26)

    https://www.independent.org/article/2026/03/23/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-immigrants/

  • Stupidity, not malice

    Source: The Price of Liberty
    by Nathan Barton

    “In the past several weeks, we have heard a lot of claims about the tragedy at a girl’s school in southern Iran. … The building was indeed part of the IRGC base until 2016, when a new wall was built dividing that area and that building from the rest. Apparently as part of the conversion of the building into a school. But American intel agencies: analysts and reviewers, did not know this. We submit this is not an excuse: there is no excuse for a negligent action like this. No excuse for killing innocent children, or even their teachers and staff. And we cannot even blame the IRGC or the tyrants of the Islamic Republic for perhaps attempting to use a girl’s school as a human shield for their military base. The blame rests solely on the intelligence agencies of the FedGov, both civilian and military. And therefore, upon their superiors.” (03/23/26)

    https://thepriceofliberty.org/2026/03/23/stupidity-not-malice/

  • Our Train Trip to Political Hell

    Source: JimBovard.com
    by James Bovard

    “A recent Facebook memory notice reminded me of when I was young and naïve and full of political hope. Okay, maybe I wasn’t full of political hope but at least I wasn’t as old at the end of the last century. Facebook flashed a jpeg image with a quote from my 1999 book, Freedom in Chains: ‘It is absurd to expect governments to descend gradually, step-by-step into barbarism – as if there was a train schedule to political hell and people could get off at any stop along the way.’ When I wrote that book, I reached deep within to dredge up whatever remnants of positive thinking that I could find. But that didn’t stop the Los Angeles Times from denouncing my ‘political paranoid’s view’ in which ‘government assumes an overweening, menacing aspect.'” (03/23/26)

    https://jimbovard.com/blog/2026/03/23/our-train-trip-to-political-hell/